The prospects for casino legalization in Brazil may be approaching a turning point following a news report that the president of the lower house of the Congress plans to hold a vote on an enabling measure in November.
It appears that a sizable bloc of pro-casino lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies?the newly formed Parliamentary Front for the Legalization of Gaming in Brazil?have prevailed on Rodrigo Maia, who heads the chamber, to schedule the vote in the interests of a national economy badly in need of stimulus and a public sector badly in need of tax revenues.
The bloc, which counts 262 of the chamber’s 513 deputies as members, is backing a bill that would establish destination-scale casinos and allow for the regulation of other forms of gambling. It’s a more expansive measure than one introduced in the chamber earlier this year. There is also a companion bill in the Senate that has been waiting since the spring for a review to be completed on its constitutionality.
President Michael Temer has said he would sign whatever measure the Congress approves.
A big step came with the unveiling last month of a plan to privatize the national lottery, signaling what observers assess as a serious commitment on the part of the federal government to modernize the industry. Union Gaming Research analyst John DeCree has called the privatization scheme “a significant step towards the commercialization of gambling in Brazil”.
The government is looking for the lottery, currently run by a subsidiary of state-owned bank Caixa Economica Federal, to fetch no less than $300 million and will consider only bids from groups that include companies with large-scale lottery operating experience, a requirement that appears to limit the field to major players of the likes of IGT, Scientific Games and Intralot, all of which have expressed interest.
A request for bids was slated to be issued in October and an auction held in December, but legal challenges have since surfaced.
Casinos, meanwhile, have been on the legislative front-burner for almost two years, and despite broad agreement on their economic potential, political turmoil and a series of epic governmental corruption scandals have combined to sidetrack progress.
Given that Brazil along with Japan is seen as representing the last major untapped commercial casino markets in the world, Maia’s announcement and the possibility of an imminent vote could be game-changers.
As Edgar Lenzi, president of Curitiba-based BetConsult, said, “We believe that last week’s events were very important for the advancement of gambling legalization in Brazil, giving everybody a new hope that it will happen soon.”
